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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Regional security dialogues in Europe and in Asia:The role of Track 1.5 forums in the practice ofinternational security
Anna Longhini1 and Erin Zimmerman2*1Scuola Normale Superiore, Firenze, Italy and 2German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
(Received 17 February 2020; revised 30 April 2021; accepted 18 May 2021; first published online 11 June 2021)
AbstractThe term regional security dialogue brings to mind state-organised conferences and events; however, anunder-appreciated subset of such dialogues are organised by non-state actors that have unique formalaspects. These quasi-formal dialogues operate alongside, and sometimes in competition to, state-sanctioned processes. Why do some of these forums appear to be more effective at fostering regional dialoguethan strictly formal or informal processes with the same goals? Drawing from heterogenous discourseapproaches, we address this question by identifying and expanding the concept of the quality of discursivespace, as a key feature for the success of security dialogues. We then apply this concept to two of themost successful so-called Track 1.5 security dialogues: the Munich Security Conference (MSC) inEurope and the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) in Asia. We analyse these cases using a mix of interviewswith participants and organisers, participant observation, and public outputs with the aim of improvingthe understanding of the role and impact of Track 1.5 diplomacy in the practice of international security.Our findings highlight that it is what we call the quality of discursive space, as a mix of differentcomponents in this space, which differentiates effective dialogues from mere policy ‘talk shops’.
Keywords: Regional Security Dialogues; Track 1.5; Multitrack Diplomacy; Discourse; Discursive Quality; Security Practice
IntroductionThere is a long-standing assumption that effective dialogues are those with a wealth of politicallypowerful attendees. However, some high-level dialogues are perceived as performative rather thanfunctional or as ‘talk-shops’ where a lot is said but little accomplished.1 Instead, more impactfulpolicymaking is said to occur in other locations, such as private or bilateral meetings. This per-spective doesn’t explain why some of these forums endure and thrive and others do not.Moreover, the conditions that allow for some of these forums to be more effective at fosteringregional dialogue than strictly formal or informal processes with the same goals are unexplored.
Against this background, the purpose of this study is twofold: first of all, we seek to scrutinisethe potential of Track 1.5 processes in contrast to Track 1 (T1) and Track 2 (T2), by unravellingthe complex factors rendering specific T1.5 security dialogues more relevant and enduring than
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association. This is an OpenAccess article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), whichpermits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1Jürgen Haacke, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum: From dialogue to practical security cooperation?’, Cambridge Review ofInternational Affairs, 22:3 (2009), pp. 427–49 (p. 428); Shelden Simon, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum: Beyond the talkshop?’, The National Bureau of Asian Research (2013), available at: {https://www.nbr.org/publication/the-asean-regional-forum-beyond-the-talk-shop/} accessed 20 April 2021.
European Journal of International Security (2021), 6, 481–502doi:10.1017/eis.2021.14
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other types of regional security dialogues. This is argued by offering a clarification about the threemultitrack forms of diplomacy (see Tables 1 and 3).
While a diversity of dialogues, seminars, or conferences dominated by security issues do exist,only a few of these meetings have become stable events and research on these phenomenaremains extremely difficult in terms of ‘continuity of access’. We believe that it is mainly forthis reason that T1.5 diplomacy represents a practice that has not attracted – nor asked for –extensive academic attention.
Secondly, we try to meet this challenge and propose an insightful examination of two case stud-ies that are broadly considered to be successful security forums in Europe and in Asia, the MunichSecurity Conference (MSC) and the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), which are intended to serve asexploratory but significant examples of the multitrack diplomacy context and of security practice.
In this article, we borrow from heterogeneous discourse approaches as a theoretical back-ground for analysing T1.5 security dialogues. The added value of adopting a discourse perspectiverelies not just on the acknowledgement of the reciprocal relationship between ideas and institu-tions,2 but also in the assumption that discourse can produce the social reality it defines. Not onlyelite discourse produces individual or joint policy practices.3 The focus on discourse better
Table 1. Type of track dialogues and discourse.
Tracks Definition Type and function of discourse
T1 dialogues Under this category falls officialgovernmental diplomacy. Theseare formal dialogues directlyorganised by or with the directinvolvement of the state.
Official and partly public foreign policydiscourse.
Mostly communicative
T2 dialogues These are non-state dialoguesorganised by non-state actors withgovernmental officialsparticipating in their ‘unofficial’capacity.
Either in its hard (peace negotiation)or soft version, T2 focuses onspecific problem solving.Participants have some form ofaccess to official policy makingcircles*. Even ‘soft’ T2 exchangesaim to address and solve specificsecurity challenges.
Unofficial and not public discourse.Mostly coordinative
T1.5 or HybridTrack dialogues
Informal dialogues organised bynon-state actors with state-levelbacking and participation.
No specific problem solving involved.Are not necessarily ‘hard’ tracktwo exercises in which theobjective is to help governmentsnegotiate political agreements,and the agenda is wider than T2.
Both official and unofficial discourse &wider foreign policy debate, whichmight turn to marginal politicaldiscourse (‘talk shop’).
Both communicative and coordinative
*Source: Dalia Dassa Kaye, ‘Rethinking Track Two diplomacy’, in Talking to the Enemy: Track Two Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia(RAND Corporation, 2007), pp. 6–8.
2Vivien Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, Annual Review of PoliticalScience, 11:1 (2008), pp. 303–26; Vivien Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: Scope, dynamics, and philosophical underpin-nings’, in Frank Fischer and Herbert Gottweis (eds), The Argumentative Turn Revised: Public Policy as CommunicativePractice (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), pp. 85–113.
3Jennifer Milliken, ‘The study of discourse in international relations: A critique of research and methods’, EuropeanJournal of International Relations, 5:2 (1999), pp. 225–54 (pp. 240–2).
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explains the role of agents as non-state actors, and individuals, in international politics as legit-imate players within regional institutions.4
Within this frame, we further develop the concept of discourse first by defining the concept of‘discursive space’ and then introducing the components of the quality of such space. Indeed,assuming that creating a location for dialogue is not enough to ensure its success, we arguethat it is the quality of the discourse that occurs in such spaces that determines which forumswill attract politically relevant audiences, earn credibility, gain legitimacy as locations of substan-tive policy outcomes, and ultimately be considered effective.
We suggest that the effectiveness (ultimately the success) of a dialogue, that is to say its ability toinform and progress the practice of international security, is determined in large part by what we callthe quality of its discursive space. As such, the political authority of a dialogue’s attendees, while cer-tainly important, is only one of the three factors we identified as being relevant components of ourindependent variable, ‘the discursive quality’, the other two being: (1) the type(s) and content of dis-course used, and (2) the level of formality or informality of the dialogue itself. The necessary con-dition for a dialogue to become or remain effective has to be found as a balance among these factors.
Out of all forms of regional security dialogues, the focus of our analysis is on T1.5 securitydialogues as we found that they can be the most likely venues where one can find a balanceamong these factors. T1.5 dialogues have not received the same level of scrutiny as their formal(T1) or informal (T2) counterparts. There is a significant empirical gap to be filled, given the littleavailable literature focused on their analysis. This is particularly true on the European side, wherethere has been a longer and more robust history of effective T1 processes, with more attention pos-sibly dedicated to the role enacted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its practicesof socialisation in post-Cold War Europe,5 and the spread of security communities.6 We hypothe-sise that this has reduced the attention on T1.5 processes. Even so, informal meetings have playedimportant roles as venues of socialisation in less formal arenas,7 and have had the ability to impactregional security governance through providing important ideational and institutional blueprints.
A clarification about the two tracks of diplomacy (Track 1 and 2, or T1 and T2) and of thehybrid model (Track 1.5 or T1.5) is therefore introduced in the next part of this article.Indeed, non-state actors regularly organise T2 and occasionally T1.5 discursive spaces, whereactors can operate outside of restrictive regional norms. The results are opportunities for securityactors to ‘think outside the box’ and to ‘address security issues not yet on governmental securityagendas’.8 This is particularly important in regions like the Asia-Pacific where security issues arevaried, complex, and with a growing role of non-traditional actors filing in the governance gaps inkey issue areas.9 The quest for informal spaces facilitates a ‘habit of dialogue’ and consensus-building,10 as well as the ‘relationship maintenance’ of recent partnerships.11
4Charlotte Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse (Cambridge, MA,and London, UK: The MIT Press, 2008).
5Alexandra Gheciu, ‘Security institutions as agents of socialization? NATO and the “New Europe”’, InternationalOrganization, 59:4 (2005), pp. 973–1012.
6Emanuel Adler, ‘The spread of security communities: Communities of practice, self-restraint, and NATO’s post-Cold Warevolution’, European Journal of International Relations, 14:2 (2008), pp. 195–230.
7Kenneth Glarbo, ‘Wide-awake diplomacy: Reconstructing the common foreign and security policy of the EuropeanUnion’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6:4 (1999), pp. 634–51 (p. 647).
8Sheldon Simon, ‘Evaluating track II approaches to security diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific: The CSCAP experience’, ThePacific Review, 15:2 (2002), pp. 167–200 (p. 170).
9Shaun Breslin and Helen E. S. Nesadurai, ‘Who governs and how? Non-state actors and transnational governance inSoutheast Asia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 48:2 (2018), pp. 187–203.
10Hiro Katsumata, ‘The role of ASEAN institutes of strategic and international studies in developing security cooperationin the Asia-Pacific region’, Asian Journal of Political Science, 11:1 (2003), pp. 93–111.
11Elena Douglas and Diane Stone, ‘The informal diplomacy of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue’, AustralianJournal of International Affairs, 69 (2015), pp. 18–34.
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Ultimately, cross-regional comparisons of Track 1.5 regional security dialogues are scarce ifnot entirely absent. We believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned in determiningwhat drives the creation of these unique types of dialogues, why they exist across vastly differentpolitical environments, and how single factors can determine their success and subsequently,their longevity. With the aim of improving the understanding of the role of T1.5 diplomacy inthe practice of international security, in what follows, we clarify the research design and method-ology of our analysis. We then introduce the theoretical framework and proceed with the analysisof the selected cases.
Research design and methodologyIn this article we adopt a comparative approach in order to provide one of the first cross-regionalcomparative analysis of T1.5 security dialogues. In order to investigate regional securitydialogues – a rather unexplored phenomena – we rely on a mix of techniques that will be furtherexamined below: previous research on foreign policy think tanks, participant observation ofseminars and conferences, scholarly publications and other public outputs, and interviews withdialogue participants and organisers specifically aimed at clarifying those details that wereunavailable through public sources like conference leaflets. Then, we faced the problems ofincorporating and interpreting diverse and non-linear data that were gathered during this ana-lysis. Our empirical analysis is not entirely deducted from pre-existing categories, though it bor-rows from the discursive argument and it introduces new elements aimed at reducing thecomplexity of our field of analysis. The selected case studies are analysed in light of the threeidentified factors – as highlighted later in this article – that we hope are a welcomed additionto the cases that support the discursive argument in the analysis of international politics.
Case selection and time periodAfter preliminary research, we selected the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Europe and theShangri-La Dialogue (SLD) in Asia in order to allow a comparison of two cases sharing similarfeatures like their status as Track 1.5 security dialogues and their history of providing high-qualitydiscursive forums in their respective regions. Indeed, both forums enjoy unprecedented legitim-acy as governing spaces hosted by non-governmental organisations. It is also worth mentioningthat, albeit disputable and merely descriptive of a universe of cases in which we were interested,the 2018 survey of the best think tank conferences conducted by the Think Tank and CivilSocieties Program at the University of Pennsylvania, ranked the Shangri-La Dialogue and theMunich Security Conference among the top four in the world.12 These rankings are identicalto the previous year’s, and the MSC was ranked as the overall best think tank conference between2014–16, while the SLD was ranked third during that time.
We conducted an in-depth study of these two typical cases,13 which are broadly considered tobe successful security forums in Europe and in Asia, and we compared them along three mainqualitative factors that we have identified as being explanatory of their success. Indeed, theMSC and the SLC are significant examples of successful mechanisms in the global context ofmultitrack diplomacy and security practice. These cases are in contrast, for instance, with forumslike the ARF Experts and Eminent Persons (ARF EEP) group, a T1.5 mechanism that is consid-ered rather stagnant,14 as it lacks high-quality discursive space as defined in this study. In other
12James McGann, ‘2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (16)’, The Think Tank and Civil Societies Program(2019), available at: {https://repository.upenn.edu/think_tanks/16/} accessed 26 April 2021.
13John Gerring, ‘What is a case study and what is it good for?’, American Political Science Review (2004), pp. 341–54(p. 346); John Gerring and Lee Cojocaru, ‘Selecting cases for intensive analysis: A diversity of goals and methods’,Sociological Methods & Research, 45:3 (2016), pp. 392–423 (p. 396).
14See Moon Chung-In and Chae-Kwang You, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum’s experts and eminent persons group:Achievements, limitations, prospects’, Global Governance, 23:3 (2017), pp. 363–81.
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words, in this analysis we suggest that, among potential other causes, the ‘quality of the discursivespace’ holds explanatory power in respect to dialogue effectiveness (that is, success).
We acknowledge that the concepts of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘success’15 are problematic to quantifyin terms of ideational and policy change. We use the concept of effectiveness or success of a dia-logue – that is, its ability to ultimately inform and progress the practice of international security –to indicate that some dialogues are persistent in: (1) terms of longevity; (2) their ability to attractand retain high-level participants and; (3) being used as locations of significant foreign policy textexchange.
‘Text’ alone may simply refer to knowledge in the form of factual content, but here we areinterested in when and how text becomes meaningful and influential, affecting policy debatesthat occur within the venues under analysis. We argue that text becomes meaningful when itacquires intertextuality, that is, when it is constructed within different possible modalities ofauthority and knowledge.16 When foreign policy text is linked to authority it is transformedinto foreign policy ‘discourse’ (which may have Vivien Schmidt’s coordinative and/or communi-cative functions, as we argue in the article). Foreign policy discourse can vary in connection toformal or informal institutions of policymaking (producing official or unofficial discourse).Below, we associate different types and functions of discourse to better explain the three multi-track forms of diplomacy.
Summing up the previous considerations, in this study we understand the ‘quality of discursivespace’ to be based on a set of three qualitative factors (level of formality, types of discourse used,and access to governing authority), that were either derived from existing literature or deductedfrom the empirical analysis and pushed further to be developed into the framework proposedhere. We also offer a first attempt to navigate the complex phenomena of security dialogues inEurope and in Asia. Furthermore, we found the qualitative approach more advantageous ‘instudying complex and relatively unstructured and infrequent phenomena that lie at the heartof the subfield’, ‘especially the intensive study of one or a few cases’.17 The selected timeframefor our analysis is from 2009 to 2019, which brackets the end of the global financial crisis tojust prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.18
Data gathering and analysisEmpirical data was generated via a combination of fieldwork trips through Asia and Europe in theperiod between 2011 to 2019, which involved both the collection of interviews, and direct partici-pation in seminars and dialogues. Interviews were conducted with participants and organisers ofregional security dialogues, dialogue participants, and think tank staff.19 In Europe, four inter-views were collected with possible competitors of the MSC in early 2018, specifically with orga-nisers of the Rome MED dialogue20 and with the Italian representative of the ‘5+5 Defence
15Similarly, in the field of international relations ‘it is common to classify cases according to whether they are deterrencefailures or … successes’. See John Gerring, Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2011), p. 16.
16Lene Hansen, ‘Intertextualizing foreign policy: Genres, authority, and knowledge’, in Lene Hansen (eds), Security asPractice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), pp. 49–64.
17Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman, ‘Case study methods in the international relations subfield’, Comparative PoliticalStudies, 40:2 (2007), pp. 170–95 (pp. 171–8).
18The SLD that was due to be held in June 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the 57th MunichSecurity Conference was not held in February 2021. It will probably take place at a later date in 2021. More information isavailable at: {https://securityconference.org/en/msc-2021/} accessed 26 April 2021.
19There are several difficulties encountered when surveying think tank staff, or policy elites in general. In both Europe andAsia, most interviewees were hesitant to openly discuss their organisations out of concerns for retaining impartiality. To pro-tect the requested anonymity of some the interviewees, the names of some of those interviewed are not reported.
20The choice to interview the organiser of the MED Dialogues was based on the fact that this was the most recent and mostrelevant attempt in Europe to recreate a format similar to that of MSC as recognised by the organisers itself of this new forum.
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Initiative’.21 An email interview was then conducted with the Chief Executive Officer of theMunich Security Conference (MSC), Benedick Franke in June 2018.
The interviews are listed in Table 2. Interviews with dialogue participants and organisers werespecifically aimed at clarifying details that were not available through public sources. Text frominterviews is not quoted to prove something but it is intended to fill a void of information aboutthe dialogues, due to the difficulty of access for an independent uninvolved researcher. As such,we do not reify the opinions of the interviewees as fact, but rather we use them as internal sourcesfor better understanding the conference setting, format, participants, and organisations.
In addition to more recent interviews, further preliminary information was gathered from atotal of 26 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2013–14 in Europe for previousresearch on foreign policy think tanks in Italy, the UK, and Germany. These were useful for clari-fying the difference existing in the practice of T2 and T1.5. Moreover, other information was col-lected from more than a dozen respondents who were interviewed under ‘Chatham House rule’during one author’s four-month visiting period at the European Institute for the Mediterraneanin Barcelona in 2016.22 The latter is worth mentioning because it provided further contrast to theforums analysed in this article, as it is different from T1.5 or T2 platforms that only involveresearchers and experts, with little or no direct participation of key policymakers. In Asia andAustralia, a total of 16 interviews were conducted between 2011–12.23
Additional information was gathered through official documents published by state govern-ments and regional organisations, as well as public outputs by non-state actors, think tanks, web-sites, and scholarly publications. Overall, we stopped collecting data when we felt that furtherinformation no longer provided additional value for the scope of our analysis.
Theoretical frameworkDiscourse approaches: The state of the art
The existence of comparative analyses of Track 1.5 processes has been largely overlooked.24 Thereis no common understanding of what theoretical framework may best fit the study of this phe-nomenon. Essentially, realism struggles to explain the existence of the political space occupied by
Indeed, as previously mentioned in the article, it was rated at the third place of the best think tanks conference from the 2018Global Go To Think Tank index. Also, access to the organisers that were keen to be interviewed was relatively easy thanks tothe networking and trust already in place and due to previous studies. The Rome MED Dialogues were launched in 2015 ascooperation between the Italian think tank ISPI and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. More details are available at:{https://med.ispionline.it/} accessed 26 April 2021.
21The ‘5plus5 Defence Initiative’ is a forum for cooperation in the field of security between countries of the North andSouth Bank of the Mediterranean. In brief, experts and researchers here have more marginal roles, while DefenceMinistries are more central. More details are available at: {https://www.5plus5defence.org/} and at: {https://www.difesa.it/SMD_/Avvenimenti/Iniziativa_5plus5_Presidenza_Italia_2018/Pagine/default.aspx} accessed 26 April 2021.
22Founded in 1996 soon after the Barcelona Process, EuroMeSCo (the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission) is the lar-gest network of research centres on politics and security in the Mediterranean. Through its Annual Conference, it mainlyprovides a platform for dialogue between researchers and experts of both sides of the Mediterranean. See: {https://www.euro-mesco.net/about-us/} accessed 26 April 2021
23One of these interviews was with Timothy Huxley, the Executive Director of IISS-Asia, which organises the Shangri-LaDialogue. Of the remaining 15 interviewees, two had attended the Shangri-La Dialogue, eight were members of regional T2security networks such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-Institutes for Strategic and International Security(ASEAN-ISIS) network and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), three were think tank direc-tors, and the remaining two were T2 experts. Moreover, one of the authors attended T2 meetings such as those hosted byS. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, and the ASEAN-New Zealand Annual Dialogue inMalaysia, hosted by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, and an Australian-South Korean Dialogue hostedby the Australian Institute for International Affairs in Canberra.
24Desmond Ball provided a comparison of the developments in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), theEuropean Union (EU), and Southeast Asian Defence Models. See Desmond Ball, ‘Reflections on Defence Security in EastAsia’, RSIS Working Paper Series, No. 237 (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2012).
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Track 1.5 processes, while constructivism and new institutionalism have made some progresswith the ‘turn to ideas’,25 which acknowledges that ideas can guide institutional change by deter-mining interests26 and informing institutional responses. Still, these theoretical approaches havestruggled to account for certain ‘idea’ actors in international relations, particularly those operatingin the opaque space between or across the boundaries between formal and informal politicalspaces.
Thus, we have grounded our argument in the broader literature on discourse approaches, andwe argue that discourse, and specifically foreign policy discourse, is central to analysing T1, T2,and T1.5 processes (see Tables 1 and 3). As already observed, foreign policy discourse can vary inconnection to formal or informal institutions of policymaking, by producing official or unofficialdiscourse. Different types and functions of discourse also exist.27 Yet there is still no ‘best’ way tostudy discourse.28 In international relations, it’s been acknowledged that a varied collection ofconceptual frameworks and analytical lenses of discourse approaches29 exists and cohabit.30
Table 2. List of interviews.
Identifier Title* and Name (if applicable) Year
ID1 Scientific coordinator of the ‘Rome MED – Mediterranean Dialogues, Dr Arturo Varvelli 2018
ID2 Other organiser Rome MED Dialogues 2018
ID3 Other organiser Rome MED Dialogues 2018
ID4 Italian representative of the ‘5+5 Defence Initiative’, Dr Claudio Bertolotti 2018
ID5 Chief Executive Officer of the MSC, Dr Benedick Franke 2018
ID6 Participant from a European think tank to the Xiangshan Forum, China 2019
ID7 Executive Director of IISS-Asia, Timothy Huxley 2011
ID8 Director, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Dr Tang Siew Mun 2011
ID9 Director, Center for International Security Studies, University of Sydney, Senior Fellow LowyInstitute for International Policy, Professor Alan Dupont
2011
ID10 Head of the Environmental, Food and Climate Security Program, S. Rajaratnam School ofInternational Studies, Dr Jackson Ewing
2011
ID11 National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, Dr MelissaConley Tyler
2012
ID12-16 Organisers and Track 2 and Track 1.5 participants, ASEAN-Institutes for Strategic andInternational Studies Staffers
2011
Note: *The role refers to the period of time when the interview was carried out. Since the interview, the interviewee/s might have changedroles or employment.
25Colin Hay, ‘Constructivist Institutionalism … Or, Why Ideas into Interests Don’t Go’, paper given at the AnnualMeeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2006; Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: theexplanatory power of ideas and discourse’; Andreas Gofas and Colin Hay, The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis: APortrait of Contemporary Debates (London, UK and New York, UK: Routledge, 2010).
26By the late 1990s, interests started to be understood as a dynamic dependent variable framed by knowledge. See ClaudioRadaelli, ‘The public policy of the EU: Whiter politics of expertise’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6:5 (1999), pp. 757–4(p. 761).
27Hansen, ‘Intertextualizing foreign policy’; Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas anddiscourse’.
28Milliken, ‘The study of discourse in international relations’; Anna Holzscheiter, ‘Between communicative interaction andstructures of signification: Discourse theory and analysis in international relations’, International Studies Perspectives, 15:2(2014), pp. 142–62.
29For a comprehensive list of contributions about discourse in IR, see Holzscheiter, ‘Between communicative interactionand structures of signification’, p. 142.
30Holzscheiter, ‘Between communicative interaction and structures of signification’.
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Some scholars have studied the discursive approach and ‘the power of words in IR’ in order tofind alternative explanations to the changing attitudes towards environmental matters, like whal-ing, when it was clear that mere material interests were not helpful in explaining change.31 Muchearlier, environmental politics in the Mediterranean provided a strong case for explaining the roleof epistemic communities.32 Discourse approaches have become central to the explanation, forinstance, of case studies involving identity conflict, peacebuilding, postconflict contexts or (in)securities caused by the ‘War on Terror’.33 Scholars like Katja Freistein have suggested readingthe ASEAN Charter signed in 2007 as a ‘discursive monument’,34 acknowledging that ‘new speak-ing positions and new discursive coalitions that build on them could emerge and contribute toquestioning existing hegemonies and pushing their own projects’.35 More recently, StéphanieMartel examined how in the ASEAN context that discursive practices ‘have allowed NGOs to
Table 3. Dialogue tracks and their respective characteristics.
Track 1 Dialogues Track 1.5 Dialogues Track 2 Dialogues
Examples:• ASEAN DefenceMinisters’ Meeting(ADMM)
• 5plus5 DefenseInitiative
• Xiangshan Forum• Gymnichmeetings*
• NATO Summits
Examples:• Munich SecurityConference
• Shangri-La Dialogue,• ROME Med dialogues• Raisina Dialogue
Examples (based on what wasdeclared in interviews):• Chatham House T2 activities• Royal United Services InstituteT2 activities
• Council for SecurityCooperation in the Asia-Pacific
• ASEAN Institutes of Strategicand International Studies
Formal ⇛ Informal/Formal ⇚ Informal
Predominance ofCommunicativeDiscourse
⇛ Coordinative/Communicativediscourse
⇚ Predominance of CoordinativeDiscourse
Rigid policy ideas ⇛ Flexible/innovative policyideas (at the agendalevel))
⇚ Flexible policy ideasand problem-solving attitude(may affect implementation,especially in hard T2)
Constrained bygoverning norms
Flexible governing norms,dependent on location
⇚ Less constrained by governingnorms
Statements of policy ⇛ Both statements (public)and discussions(private)
⇚ Discussions of policy
Access to political power ⇛ Access to political power Lack of political power but oftenwith strong links to formalprocesses
*Source: See: {https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/fac/2019/08/29-30/}.
31Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations.32Peter Haas, Saving the Mediterrenean: The Politics of International Environmental Cooperation (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 1992).33Hansen, ‘Intertextualizing foreign policy’; Laura J. Shepherd, ‘Constructing civil society: Gender, power and legitimacy in
United Nations peacebuilding discourse’, European Journal of International Relations, 21:4 (2015), pp. 887–910; MariaMartin De Almagro, ‘Lost boomerangs, the rebound effect and transnational advocacy networks: A discursive approach tonorm diffusion’, Review of International Studies, 44:4 (2018), pp. 672–93; Jennifer Mustapha, Writing Southeast AsianSecurity: Regional Security and the War on Terror After 9/11 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019).
34Katja Freistein, ‘“A living document”: Promises of the ASEAN Charter’, Pacific Review, 26:4 (2013), pp. 407–29 (p. 408).35Freistein, ‘“A living document”’, p. 424.
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challenge, disrupt, and to some extent reshape ASEAN’s identity as a security community in themaking’.36 These approaches may all be classified as constructivist in the broad sense that ‘theytheorize and investigate the co-constitutive relationship between agents and structure, text andcontext, albeit with differing assumptions on the degree to which agents are masters ofdiscourse’.37
Discursive institutionalism (DI), also known as the fourth institutionalism, is part of thisbroader set of discourse approaches but has certain characteristics that make it a distinctstrand. First of all, DI not only acknowledges the complex interaction between ideas and insti-tutions, but it recognises that these interactions are managed and influenced by agents.38
Indeed, DI conceptualises discourse as inclusive not only of the ideas being conveyed buthow ideas are embodied, how they are communicated, where, by whom, and in what way:‘DI simultaneously treats institutions as given (as the context within which agents think,speak, and act) and as contingent (as the results of agents’ thoughts, words, and actions).’39
This opens up an analytical space where ‘idea actors’, particularly those not overtly connecteddirectly to existing power structures like non-state actors, may act as legitimate politicalactors. It is also significant because institutions outside of the state structure (and withoutstate oversight or legitimacy) can also provide the discursive space where discourse is framed.Adapted from Schmidt’s discussion about ‘spheres of discourse’,40 discursive space41 is alocation where discourse – the interactive process of conveying ideas – occurs.42 The import-ance of discursive space is bound to the study of multitrack diplomacy, as examined in thenext paragraph.
Determining the quality of discursive spaceIn this article, we argue that the quality of discursive space enables the construction of an effectivedialogue. Below, we have identified three factors that we hypothesise play important roles indetermining the quality of discursive space:
(a) The level of formality (or rather, informality);(b) The types of discourse used;(c) The access to governing authority.
Each of these factors functions in a delicate balance with the other two, so that the overall qual-ity of the discursive space is not found in the individual strength of each factor, but rather in thebalance of their relationships to each other.43 In Table 3, one can see how T1.5 dialogues are able
36Stéphanie Martel, ‘The polysemy of security community-building: Toward a “people-centered” Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN)?’, International Studies Quarterly, 64:3 (2020), pp. 588–99 (p. 10).
37Holzscheiter, ‘Between communicative interaction and structures of signification’, p. 143.38Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, pp. 309–11; Schmidt, ‘Discursive
institutionalism: Scope, dynamics, and philosophical underpinnings’, pp. 91–4.39Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, p. 314.40Ibid., p. 311.41Erin Zimmerman, Think Tanks and Non-Traditional Security: Governance Entrepreneurs in Asia (Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 37.42Whereas Schmidt’s ‘discursive sphere’ refers to a theoretical or academic concept where practitioners can discuss ideas
about ideas, our concept of ‘discursive space’ is more discrete. A discursive space is more delineated in that it is often a phys-ical space limited in duration and to certain participants where ideas about specific policies can be discussed.
43This list of factors is not exhaustive but serves as a nascent framework for further studies on discursive quality and result-ing political impact. We acknowledge that practical and logistical factors impact a dialogue’s potential success. For example,the location of the conference and the availability of funding also influence who is invited and who is willing to attend. Bothof the dialogues examined and deemed ‘successful’ enjoy large budgets that allow them to select impressive venues, employlarge numbers of staff at the event, and financially support conference attendees.
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to carve out a political space between T1 and T2 that encompasses the most discursively valuableaspects from the other two types of dialogue, creating a unique balance between the two.
On one side of the spectrum, T1 is known for its formality, rigidity of processes and governingnorms, and strong governing authority. On the other end of the spectrum is T2, which is largelyinformal and less constrained, with more politically challenging if not even innovative ideas, butlacking direct political power. In the middle ground cultivated by T1.5 organisers, there exists anoverlap where the strengths of both tracks can be exploited without succumbing to their accom-panying weaknesses.
Levels of formality
Formality is defined broadly by how ‘strict’ a dialogue is in terms of norm adherence, openness tothe public, its official status (formal or informal), the political role of attendees, and the dominanttype of discourse used (see factor B). It also refers to how the dialogue is structured in terms ofagenda, interactions between participants, and the availability of unscheduled time for attendeesto hold their own private meetings.
In Southeast Asia, consensus-based decision-making, non-confrontation, and non-interference in domestic politics are the preferred governing norms. These norms place con-straints on what issues can be discussed, how, and by whom.44 Formal dialogues in the regionare also very structured and offer little opportunity for the inclusion of new ideas or politicalactors. As a result, the higher level of formality has resulted in a lower potential for high-qualitydiscourse.45 For these reasons, some formal processes, such as ASEAN and the ASEAN RegionalForum (ARF) in Asia have been labelled as ‘talk shops’, which have struggled with stagnation andhave suffered a subsequent lack of state support.46 Under the Bush administration, Secretary ofDefence Condoleezza Rice skipped the ARF twice,47 which, in turn, encouraged several othercountry’s ministers to forgo attending or to depart early.48
Similar dialogues exist in Europe, where certain events are predetermined governmental initiatives.The public aspects of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) or of the MED Dialogues in Rome (notthe bilateral meetings), for instance, largely fall in this type of format. These forums are often restrictedby largely predefined outcomes (usually in the form of a joint memorandum or letter of intent), andfixed agendas and schedules restrict opportunities for the introduction of new ideas, deliberation, anddebate. The resulting dialogues offer little more than performance spaces where government officialscan exploit the available discursive space to advocate for and consolidate their narratives.49
It was in determining the impact for formality on dialogues where our interviews with T2 andT1.5 processes proved extremely beneficial in clarifying the practice and value of each track. Incontrast to the T1.5 forums analysed later in this research, three UK think tanks openly identifiedthemselves as participating in activities related to ‘Track 2/unofficial diplomacy’ activities, as didtwo in Germany and one in Italy.50 The settings provided for unofficial diplomacy activities of the
44Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter?: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,2009).
45Anthony Mely Caballero, Regional Security in Southeast Asia: Beyond the ASEAN Way (Singapore: Institute of SoutheastAsian Studies, 2005).
46Katsumata, ‘The role of ASEAN-ISIS’; Simon, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum’.47This happened in 2005, and the first time a Secretary of State has skipped the ARF since its formation in 1994.48Dana Dillon, ‘Rice misses the ASEAN Regional Forum: Now what?’, The Heritage Foundation (2005); Malcolm Cook,
‘The Obama administration and the East Asia Summit: Exception, not transformation’, in The United States in theIndo-Pacific (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. 2020).
49As an example, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently used the MED Dialogues in Rome as a loca-tion where he could speak of the overall view of the Region in his administration’s perspective. The speech is available at:{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk450uRy0ks} accessed 26 April 2021.
50At the time of the interviews in 2014 these were Chatham House, RUSI, and ECFR in the UK, KAS and SWP inGermany, and CIPMO in Italy. Historically, UK foreign policy think tanks seemed far more active than others in these mat-ters and also more willing to talk about these activities (the Royal United Services Institute, RUSI, was created in 1831). They
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surveyed think tanks were intentionally removed from the media spotlight and not meant to beunder scrutiny. According to an interview collected at Chatham House in London in 2014: ‘TheCabinet office sometimes relies on Chatham House, particularly in case of crisis, as a place wheresome conversations can be facilitated.’ The need for discretion was more explicitly the position ofthe Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, relative to meetings with North Korea.51
One of the interviewees at the RUSI referred to these activities as ‘cultural diplomacy’, whileanother researcher at RUSI says: ‘We can work in more informal settings. This can also meanbeing used by governments. They have realised that think tanks can be used as a channel forunofficial diplomacy.’ Interviewees in Asia shared similar experiences, in that Track 2 wasthere to provide informal input to T1 and to act as hosts, but that the success of policy orideas was strictly reflected by the success of the T1 process (ID12–13).
In sum, unofficial diplomacy or Track 2 includes all the activities that some think tanks may carryout to support bilateral or multilateral meetings between different players relative to political or con-flict issues, behind closed doors, away from media attention, and with no expectation of acknowl-edgement. This is different from the Track 1.5 forums analysed later on in this research, as theseactors take a more active role in the discursive process aside from providing a location for dialogue.
The ideal balance of formality appears to exist at the confluence of strictness and structure.Structurally, for a dialogue to be effective it needs to be well planned but not rigid. It requiresflexibility in its agenda and format, and for attendees to remain diverse in their political ideasand approaches. It also needs to provide participants with opportunities to engage in coordinativediscourse, which should also translate in giving participants the chance to have some time off theschedule to build or strengthen relations. There is a direct relationship between the level of strict-ness observed by a dialogue and the type of discourse that occurs. Strictness equates to commu-nicative discourse, where acts are mostly performative, and innovative or challenging ideas are notencouraged. The less strict a dialogue is, the higher the propensity for coordinative discourse,which is more deliberative in nature.
Discursive types
The second factor influencing discursive quality concerns the types of discourse used. There aretwo types of discourse: communicative and coordinative.52 Communicative discourse is the towhom of discursive institutionalism, and is used to transmit policy and programmatic ideas tothe public and legitimise policy decisions.53 It is most often used in situations where policy posi-tions are well defined, the discourse is comparatively unreflective, and the participants are limitedin their ability to alter their ‘official’ positions.
The other type is coordinative discourse, which occurs between policymakers, experts, andvarious stakeholders (like business leaders, for instance). Coordinative discourse is the ‘what’
constitute a relevant platform for the government to maintain or develop unofficial contacts with international players, astheir reputation was sufficiently solid to be perceived as a valuable partner. Especially in the past, the Italian think tankCIPMO was active in the organisation of meetings behind closed doors among both officials and civil society representativeto cope with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. However, it is a small centre compared to the others mentioned in the UK or inGermany and it is difficult to trace and verify what was accomplished at the time. See Anna Longhini, ‘Think Tanks, ForeignPolicy and the Politics of Expertise in Contemporary Europe: A Comparative Study’ (unpublished PhD thesis, ScuolaNormale Superiore, Florence, Italy, 2015).
51According to their Annual Report 2012–13: ‘In November 2012, RUSI became one of the first Western think-tanks inhistory to carry out nuclear talks with the Korean People’s Army in Pyongyang. RUSI also gained access into the uniqueinsights of the Korean Worker’s Party and the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, all of whom offered dramatic per-spectives of the security situation on the Korean peninsula. RUSI has been asked to brief the UK Foreign and CommonwealthOffice, as well as the US Special Representatives for North Korea and the Six-Party Talks, Ambassadors Glyn Davies andClifford Hart.’
52Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse’.53Ibid., pp. 310–13; Schmidt ‘Discursive institutionalism: Scope, dynamics, and philosophical underpinnings’, p. 86.
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of discursive institutionalism, and it is used to develop policy ideas and share understandings ofcurrent policy issues.54 This type of discourse is much more deliberative and often occurs amongand between actors who hold less-defined policy positions, are more reflective of alternative pol-icy options, and are open/able to alter policy positions.55 Due to the elite nature of participants,coordinative discourse is less public and occurs largely in policy circles, across political networks,within epistemic communities, or via advocacy coalitions.56
As Nicola Jo-Anne Smith pointed out, in order to be an effective tool of political influence,discourse must perform a variety of functions, including providing focal points, presenting anidea, developing it, identifying its necessity and appropriateness, and persuading elites of itsnecessity and legitimacy.57 This requires the use of both types of discourse, meaning not onlywhat is said, but to whom and in what manner. Most dialogue processes contain both commu-nicative and coordinative discourse. However, coordinative discourse is the most significant forpolicymaking as it is used to introduce new ideas, as well as deliberate and disseminate themamong policy elites. The more coordinative discourse taking place at a dialogue, the more poten-tial the discursive space has in terms of producing policy-relevant outcomes.
Access to governing authority
A third factor of high-quality discursive space is access to governing authority. Access is the oper-ationalised notion of the to whom in DI, and can be both tangible (participants are government offi-cials or have direct access to such officials) or intangible (participants exercise political powerthrough other means, such as media influence, ideational leadership, and funding). Regardless oftheir source of power, it is important for dialogues to have participants that have the prestige andreputation to authorise their resultant policy activities.58 Without access to the actors who can imple-ment policies, ideas for new or improved policies will not be transmitted, regardless of their quality.
However, it is important to underline that the process of knowledge transfer described in thiscontext is rarely coercive. In expert-to-policymaker relations, it is the policymaker that must bewilling to hear and, then, follow the expert advice. In high-level forums, experts need to be con-sidered as an already qualified interlocutor to take part and to have the chance to give their con-tribution. In many instances, ‘government officials do not want to speak, they want to listen andlet the scholars speak’ so they can access new information (ID8). Being heard though, is not at alla direct consequence of access. Access is not a sufficient condition to convey ideas. On the con-trary, pressure may exist from the policymaker’s side to make sure that expert views are adjustedto the governmental line. This ‘autonomy dilemma’ occurs when non-governmental institutionsface the difficult choice between facilitated access to policymakers but at the reduced autonomyand the ability to produce critical policy analysis.59 This is where the other two components (for-mality, and diversity of discourse) come in, and often where the distinction between high-qualityand low-quality discursive space can be seen.
In what follows, we apply the proposed framework in order to analyse the case studies on thebases of the three identified factors: level of formality, types of discourse, access to governingauthority. In turn, this aids in identifying why some meetings have thrived while others havestagnated.
54Vivien Schmidt, ‘Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as thefourth “new institutionalism”’, European Political Science Review, 2:1 (2010), pp. 1–25.
55Luigi Bobbio, ‘Types of deliberation’, Journal of Public Deliberation, 6:2 (2010).56Schmidt, ‘Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, p. 310.57Nicola Jo-Anne Smith, ‘Examining ideas empirically: The political discourse of globalisation in Ireland’, in Gofas and
Hay (eds), The Role of Ideas in Political Analysis, p. 145.58Chung-In Moon and Chae-Kwang You, ‘The ASEAN Regional Forum’s experts and eminent persons group:
Achievements, limitations, prospects’, Global Governance, 23:3 (2017), pp. 363–81 (p. 366).59Herman Kraft, ‘The autonomy dilemma of track two diplomacy in Southeast Asia’, Security Dialogue, 31:3 (2000),
pp. 343–56.
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Security dialogue(s) in EuropeWhile there is well-established literature on the use of expert knowledge in decision-making,especially related to environmental, health, and migration related issues60 there are limited refer-ences on the role of Track 1.5 security dialogues in Europe. These practices have only progres-sively become institutionalised within single national entities, as different political contextshave not always set the right incentives for cooperation between non-state actors and policy-makers in the past.61
Despite these limitations, the Munich Security Conference (MSC), founded in 1963, is notonly the oldest T1.5 Forum in Europe, but it still represents the European scene in the securitydomain. The MSC actually predates the provision for setting up a Council of Foreign Ministersand a Political Committee to give a foreign policy dimension to the nascent European Union, asthese were laid down in the 1973 Copenhagen Report.62 Other, more recent ‘newcomers’ in theEuropean scene are the Rome MED Dialogues (started in 2015), and the Stockholm SecurityConference (SSC), which saw its very first events in 2016, but has a more local outreach.63 Onthe contrary, the previously mentioned Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission (EuroMeSCo),established in 1996 but seeing new life in 2015, differs from the previous because participantsare mostly researchers and experts (see Table 4).
Differently from the other forums, the MSC is the only one that has existed for more than fiftyyears, attracting the presence of world political leaders and whose topics of discussion are broadenough to allow for the coexistence of different types of discourse.
The Munich Security Conference (MSC)According to many observers, the MSC has been the ‘window’ through which contemporarysecurity culture in Europe can be viewed.64 While the Conference is no longer the only securityevent in Europe, it remains the oldest and possibly the most relevant. Like the SLD in Asia, theMSC possesses all of the components we have identified for a high-quality discursive space: accessto governing authority, several levels of formality, and tries to represent an abundance of diverseideas. Founded as ‘a forum that brings together politicians, diplomats and defence officials fromaround the world for talks on global security policy, the MSC’s stated goal is to provide a locationfor ‘open and constructive discussion about the most pressing security issues of the day’.65 Also,the MSC has been the premier gathering each year on NATO security issues: ‘Munich is still thejewel in the crown of the international security conference circuit and the one that is guaranteedto make headlines’,66 according to the former Danish premier and NATO Secretary-General,Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
60Monika Ambrus, Karin Arts, Ellen Hey, and Helena Raulus, The Role of ‘Experts’ in International and EuropeanDecision-Making Processes: Advisors, Decision-Makers or Irrelevant Actors (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press2014); Christina Boswell, The Political Uses of Expert Knowledge: Immigration Policy and Social Research (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
61Anna Longhini, ‘Institutionalization of foreign policy think tanks in Italy and in the UK: An explanatory framework’,Central European Journal of Public Policy, 9:2 (2015), pp. 96–121.
62Glarbo, ‘Wide-awake diplomacy’, p. 641.63Without the same resonance of the MSC and of the Rome MED Dialogues, SSC doesn’t see the same presence of world
political leaders. It has a more local outreach and the focus of the conference is more focused on one single aspect of securitythat is selected each year. More details available at: {https://www.sipri.org/events/2019/2019-stockholm-security-conference}.
64Tobias Bunde, ‘Transatlantic collective identity in a nutshell: Debating security policy at the Munich Security Conference(2002–2014)’, Transworld, Working Paper No. 45 (2014).
65Wolfgang Ischinger, ‘Towards mutual security: From Wehrkunde to the Munich Security Conference’, in WolfgangIschinger, Tobias Bunde, Antje Lein-Struck, and Adrian Oroz (eds), Towards Mutual Security: Fifty Years of MunichSecurity Conference (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 29–36 (p. 29).
66Quoted in Matthew Karnitschnig, ‘Where world’s power brokers really meet’, Politico EU (25 January 2018), available at:{https://www.politico.eu/article/munich-security-conference-davos-elite/} accessed 27 April 2021.
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The Munich Security Conference as a discursive spaceDespite elite participation, the MSC is comparatively non-hierarchical in nature, or, at least,efforts go in that direction. Large entourages are not permitted in the hotels, with the attemptof reducing the ‘bubble’ around policymakers, and making them more approachable.Furthermore, seating is alphabetical as opposed to hierarchical, which is used by conference orga-nisers to encourage maximum interaction among participants (ID5).
Levels of formality
In terms of formality, the MSC is structured like a conference with speakers, panel discussions,and lunches with specific topics and attendees. However, ample informal spaces are planned,allowing for the creation of less rigid interactions. It also offers off-record and invitation-only ses-sions (see, for example, in 2017 there were private sessions on global surveillance, cyber security,and OPEC and oil).67 Each of these sub-fora are specially designed to provide informal discursivespace, welcome new ideas, and foster non-standard access to policymaking authority.
In the MSC all types of participants move between different levels of formality. Unlike more for-mal dialogues and other high-level meetings in Europe, ‘the character of the MSC does not force pol-itical leaders to demonstrate unity’ as it neither aims to ‘produce a final communiqué nor aims toformulate concrete policy’.68 Instead, the MSC offers a mix of formal and informal, as well as publicand private venues for the discussion of security ideas. This mix of formal and informal fosters bothcommunicative and coordinative discourse and the free expression of ideas. Participants take advan-tage of the relatively low levels of formality to engage in ‘open and frank’ exchanges of views and havegiven the MSC a reputation similar to that later considered a defining feature of the SLD. Apparently,conference participants feel able to ‘talk about the current difficulties between allies or to openly con-front the prevailing orthodoxy’.69 In this context it is worth mentioning as an example the famousspeech given by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007 that started with the statement:
This conference’s structure allows me to avoid excessive politeness and the need to speak inroundabout, pleasant but empty diplomatic terms. This conference’s format will allow me tosay what I really think about international security problems.70
The Conference dialogue’s format offers an opportunity for frank criticisms. While this may betrue also for other conferences, it is the resonance of the MSC itself and the levels of participantsthat makes this quite unique. In the same speech against the unipolar model emerging after the
Table 4. Security events in Europe by longevity, type of participants, and topics discussed.
Conference Longevity ParticipantsTopics
discussed
Munich Security Conference(MSC)
Since 1963 Attracts world leaders Broad
Rome MED-Dialogues Since 2015 Attracts world leaders Broad
Stockholm Security Conference(SSC)
Since 2016 More local outreach Specific
EuroMeSCo Since 1996 (renewed in2015)
Mainly researchers andexperts
Broad
67See: {https://securityconference.org/en/msc-2017/agenda/} accessed 27 April 2021.68Bunde, ‘Transatlantic collective identity in a nutshell’, p. 4.69Ibid.70Vladimir Putin, ‘Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Security Conference’, Munich, 10 February 2007,
available at: {http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034} accessed 27 April 2021.
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Cold War, President Putin went on to both outline the perspectives of his country and stronglycriticise the United States and NATO. The format of public statements has been copied by new-comers such as the MED Dialogues in Rome (ID1). The shortcomings of public statements of thiskind are evident and depend on their performative nature, but considered in context the strictfiltering of more formal dialogues is avoided.
In other occasions at the MSC, the value is not in what is said, but instead by what is leftunsaid. For instance, at the first MSC after Donald Trump’s inauguration, multiple high-levelspeakers focused on the need for unity, coherence, and adherence to shared values, with, asobserved by Washington Post reporter Anne Appelbaum, no mention whatsoever of the newelected US President Trump. The implications of this omission were clear to those in attendance:that the US president himself was a threat to the Western Alliance.71 At the same time, severalother members of the US delegation openly criticised the new American President’s policies.Conference Chairman Ischinger noted that the ability of different components of a sovereign gov-ernment – publicly debating and fighting ‘it out in a democratic manner’ – was a testament to theopen venue provided by the MSC.72
Types of discourse
In addition to offering a clear opportunity for communicative discourse, the MSC also offers bothformal and informal behind-the-scenes opportunities for coordinative discourse. Supplementingthe main sessions are additional discursive opportunities such as public panels, recently addedbreak-out sessions (which are private), as well as the ‘women’s breakfast’, the CEO lunch, andother spaces at the ‘margins of the conference’.73 Apart from the main hall, there are indeedmany different bilateral affairs rooms set up to host the more than 1,200 bilateral meetingsheld during the weekend of the MSC. There are also informal and private breakfast meetingsand invitation-only lunches. In 2017 alone, there were 150 side events at the MSC. The currentChief Operating Officer of the MSC, Benedikt Franke, noted that with hundreds of confidentialside events and thousands of organised bilateral meetings, ‘I do not think you will find more openand frank debates anywhere else’ (ID5).
It is important to underline that ‘the character of the MSC does not force political leaders todemonstrate unity’ as it neither aims to ‘produce a final communiqué nor aims to formulate con-crete policy’.74 Instead, as former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden wrote, ‘Munich isthe place to go to hear bold policies announced, new ideas and approaches tested, old partnershipreaffirmed, and new ones formed … Munich connects European leaders and thinkers with theirpeers from across the world to have an open and frank exchange of idea.’75
Access to governing authority
An essential characteristic of effective dialogues is their ability to endure over time, and the MSChas certainly done this. The Conference has a proven capacity to adapt, first with its ideationalagenda and then its membership after the end of the Cold War.76 The Conference also seeks
71Anne Applebaum, ‘The spectre of Trump in Munich’, The Washington Post (19 February 2017); Aaron Blake, ‘JohnMcCain just systematically dismantled Donald Trump’s entire worldview’, The Washington Post (17 February 2017).
72Melinda Crane, ‘MSC Chairman Ischinger: “Some degree of clarity has been reestablished”’, DW News (19 February2017).
73Ischinger, ‘Towards mutual security’, p. 29.74Bunde, ‘Transatlantic collective identity in a nutshell’, p. 4.75Joseph R. Biden, ‘Congratulating the Munich Security Conference on fifty years of contributions to transatlantic secur-
ity’, in Ischinger et al. (eds), Towards Mutual Security, pp. 19–22 (p. 20).76William Cohen, ‘Little patience for frivolous speeches: A personal remembrance of Wehrkunde and Ewald-Heinrich von
Kleist’, in Ischinger et al. (eds), Towards Mutual Security, pp. 367–70.
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to increase female participation to 25 per cent (ID5). Its subsequent gains in diversity in terms ofincluding more participants from differing professional backgrounds and political views has keptthe conference contemporary.
The MSC has also worked actively to ensure that it ‘brings together a mix of political leaders,government officials, military officers, academics, think tankers and journalists who focus onsecurity issues’.77 The MSC has added more participants in the form of ‘CEOs, human rights acti-vists, environmentalists, and other leaders representing global civil society’.78 Even so, theConference has also been criticised for including ‘dictator’s henchmen’ alongside the more pref-erable ‘free citizens’.79 Though the Conference still receives criticisms for not being aggressiveenough in its adaptation to the changing security landscape, its agenda has evolved beyond‘hard security’ topics to include so-called ‘non-traditional security’ issues such as climate change,financial insecurity, and cybersecurity.80
Lastly, the discursive space provided by the MSC offers substantial access to governing author-ity. In 2012, the then UN Ambassador to NATO commented that the MSC was essentially the‘Oscars’ of security policy.81 In 2013, ‘more than sixty foreign and defense ministers were inattendance, along with eleven heads of state and government’.82 The MSC is so influential thatit provides an ad hoc office for the host-country delegation of the German Foreign Office,which coordinates the appointments for the German Foreign Ministers (ID5). Overall in 2017,around forty places were reserved for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; twenty-five for servingprime ministers or presidents; and ninety places for members of parliament. In addition, the con-ference has hosted the UN Secretary General, vice presidents of the United States, Nobel laure-ates, and in any given year one-tenth of the full US Senate has been known to attend.83
With this calibre of policymaker in attendance, access to governing authority is available forthe increasingly diverse contingent of ideas actors who attend the MSC. Selected byAmbassador Ischinger for ‘their level of contribution to the debate or relevance of their workto policy and politics’, the numbers of academics, NGOs, and civil society actors in attendancehas steadily gone up84 in both number and influence.85 The increase in NGOs reflects ‘theincreased presence and influence of NGOs in international politics’ (ID5). Together with amore dedicated presence on social media, these are clear signs of an attempt by the MSC tobe more inclusive than in the past.
Security dialogue(s) in AsiaThe first regional governance organisation in Southeast Asia was the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN) founded in 1967. Starting with just five members, ASEAN now includesall the nations of Southeast Asia and engages with the rest of the region via the ASEAN RegionalForum (ARF)86 and the ASEAN Plus processes. A series of Track 2 processes evolved alongside
77Bunde, ‘Transatlantic collective identity in a nutshell’, p. 3.78Ischinger, ‘Towards mutual security’, p. 34.79Eliot Cohen, ‘Witnessing the collapse of the global elite’, The Atlantic (19 February 2018).80Bunde, ‘Transatlantic collective identity in a nutshell’.81Ibid., p. 3.82Ischinger, ‘Towards mutual security’, p. 30.83Ischinger, ‘Towards mutual security’.84The 2018 list of non-governmental partners includes important Washington think tanks (RAND Corporation, The
Brookings Institute, Atlantic Council) and several UK think tanks (RUSI and Chatham House). The few other Europeanthink tanks included are the SIPRI (Sweden), the FIIA (Finland), and the CSS-ETH Zurich (Switzerland). In 2018 theMSC also started providing public access to some events.
85Benedict Franke, ‘Letters: Is the Munich Security Conference to blame for the void in international relations? Readersrespond to Eliot Cohen’s critique of a gathering that may now have lost its way’, The Atlantic (2 May 2018).
86ARF was established in 1994. See: {https://asean.org/asean-political-security-community/asean-regional-forum-arf/}accessed 27 April 2021.
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these organisations and assumed the role of informing Track 1 through research and policy ana-lysis.87 For instance, the ASEAN-Institutes for Strategic and International Studies, established in1988, works alongside ASEAN and is tasked with providing policy advice as well as aiding inregional coordination and cooperation.88 The Council for Security Cooperation in theAsia-Pacific (CSCAP) holds a similar role with the ASEAN Regional Forum.89 However, theseprocesses, both T1 and T2, were established ostensibly for foreign ministers.
As late as 2001 there was still no regional security dialogue in Asia for defence ministers, des-pite a growing list of regional security threats.90 Separate attempts by both the US Secretary ofDefense and the Thai Defense Minister to establish such a gathering were unsuccessful.91
Ultimately, it was a British think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS),which established the first high-level defence ministers’ dialogue in Asia as a response to the‘striking gap in the roster of inter-governmental meetings in the Asia-Pacific region’.92 Thismeans that defence diplomacy in Asia started in the unique political spaces of T1.5 diplomacy:this is potentially indicative that existing processes at the time, both formal and informal, lackedsome of the essential factors necessary for successful security discourse.
The success of the SLD has led to other defence dialogues, many of which attempt to take onits unique characteristics. ASEAN established the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)and China established the Xiangshan Forum,93 both in 2006. The Raisina Dialogue, which has aSouth Asian emphasis, was established in 2016.94 Informal processes have also proliferated, suchas the Track II Network of ASEAN Defense and Security Institutions (NADI), which is a thinktank network similar to ASEAN-ISIS and CSCAP and closely aligned with the ADMM.95 In sum,after decades of catching up to the complex constellation of security diplomacy in Europe, ‘Asia’strack two dialogues are numerous and diverse. There is no precise count, but estimates from onereputable source suggest that hundreds of such meetings take place every year (Dialogue andResearch Monitor, 2007).’96 Despite the present wealth of both formal and informal security dia-logues across Asia, the SLD still retains its premier place on the year’s agenda. In fact, it oftenovershadows many state-sponsored and formal dialogues, many of which have been criticisedas ineffective and inefficient.
87Kao Kim Hourn, ‘Whispering in the Ears of Power: The Role of ASEAN Track Two Diplomacy’ (Phnom Penh:Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, 2002); Carolina G. Hernandez and Ralph A. Cossa, ‘CSCAP and the con-tinuing search for its track two identity’, in Brian L. Job and Erin Williams (eds), 2011: CSCAP Regional Security Outlook(CSCAP Canada, the Center of International Relations (CIR), University of British Columbia for CSCAP, 2011), pp. 54–9.
88Josef Wanandi, ‘ASEAN ISIS and its regional and international networking’, in Hadi Soesastro, Clara Joewono, andCarolina G. Hernandez (eds), Twenty Two Years of ASEAN ISIS: Origin, Evolution and Challenges of Track TwoDiplomacy (Jakarta: Published for ASEAN ISIS by CSIS, 2006), pp. 31–43.
89Paul Evans, ‘Assessing the ARF and CSCAP’, in Hung-mao Tien and Cheng Tun-Jen (eds), The Security Environment inthe Asia-Pacific (New York, NY: Institute for National Policy Research; M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 2000).
90Christopher McNally and Charles Morrison, Asia Pacific Security Outlook 2002 (Japan: Center for InternationalExchange, 2002).
91David Capie and Brendan Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue and the institutionalization of defence diplomacy in Asia’,The Pacific Review, 23:3 (2010), pp. 359–76.
92Timothy Huxley (eds), 10th Asia Security Summit (the Shangri-La Dialogue) (Singapore: The International Institute forStrategic Studies, 2011), p. 4.
93According to a participant to the Forum (interview with ID6) who was invited to this forum in China for three years, thisis a very large event with more than two thousand participants. Organised by two military organisations, the ChinaAssociation for Military Science (CAMS), and China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS), the forum is openedwith speeches from top Chinese officials (like the Head of Police or the Minister of Defence). Almost all military delegationsof the world were invited. While there is a section dedicated to think tankers, academics, and security experts, the forum ismore similar to a T1 event. See: {www.xiangshanforum.cn}.
94See: {https://www.orfonline.org/raisina-dialogue/about-us/#AboutUs} accessed 27 April 2021.95For NADI, see: {https://www.rsis.edu.sg/nadi/}; for the ADMM, see: {https://asean.org/asean-political-security-
community/asean-defence-ministers-meeting-admm} accessed 27 April 2021.96David Capie, ‘When does track two matter? Structure, agency and Asian regionalism’, Review of International Political
Economy, 17:2 (2010), pp. 291–318 (p. 294).
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The Shangri-La DialogueThe International Institute for Strategic Studies hosted the first Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) inSingapore in 2002.97 Since then, the Dialogue ‘has consistently managed to generate favorableopinion among regional elite’98 and it is known for having a ‘considerable policy impact’.99
For example, spurred by the Sichuan earthquake and Cyclone Nargis in 2008, it was at theDialogue that attending ministers agreed to a set of principles guiding responses to humanitariandisasters.100 The Dialogue was also the location of the announcement for the ‘Eyes in the Skyinitiative’, a joint effort between Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia to combat piracy in theMalacca Straits using air patrols. The success of the Dialogue has also had an impact in that itserved as evidence that a regional security dialogue was viable and ‘it is reasonable to supposethat the Shangri-La process helped to erode the hesitations within ASEAN about allowing defenceministers to establish their own forum’.101 As noted by the then-US Defense Secretary ChuckHagel, ‘there’s no other event, no other venue like it’.102
The Shangri-La Dialogue as a discursive space
The SLD is a ‘unique meeting of ministers and delegates from over 50 countries’. It facilitates‘easy communication and fruitful contact among the region’s most important defence and secur-ity policymakers. Each year’s agenda is intentionally wide-ranging, reflecting the many defenceand security challenges facing a large and diverse region.’103
The SLD was modelled on the MSC, and the Director General of the IISS, which organises theShangri-La Dialogue, has been a regular attender of the Munich Security Conference.104 Muchlike the MSC, the SLD has adapted itself to the changing dynamics of the region and has endea-voured to keep the three components of high-quality discourse we identified earlier in this articlein balance, albeit in different ways.
Whereas the MSC explicitly portrays itself as an ‘informal’ conference with ‘formal’ attendees,the Executive Director of IISS-Asia stated that he believes the dialogue to be T1, despite the factthat the agenda is controlled by the IISS (ID7). Even so, we maintain that the SLD more accur-ately fits the description of T1.5 given that it is not organised by a sovereign state but rather anon-governmental entity. Regardless of the label applied, the SLD has placed itself in the nebu-lous political space between formal and informal governing structures. It is one of the very fewwhich have overtly sought to occupy the space that straddles the boundaries between policy-makers and experts, and political power and innovative ideas.
Levels of formality
The SLD enjoys many of the advantages of being an informal structure (control of its ownagenda, lack of public scrutiny, no predetermined outcomes), while also benefiting from having
97As acknowledged in the Keynote speech of the 18th SLD by the IISS Director-General and Chief Executive of the IISS DrJohn Chipman: ‘Two decades ago, when the IISS decided to launch a defence summit in Asia that would uniquely bringtogether defence ministers who otherwise would have no easy means of convening themselves, we chose Singapore becauseof its well-established reputation for diplomatic entrepreneurship.’ (Keynote Address Speech at the 18TH Asia SecuritySummit The IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, 31 May 2019).
98Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 360.99Ball, ‘Reflections on defence security in East Asia’, p. 19.100Zimmerman, Think Tanks and Non-Traditional Security, p. 142.101Ron Huisken, ‘ADMM+8: An acronym to watch’, East Asia Forum (8 October 2010).102Chuck Hagel, ‘News Transcript: Media Availability with Secretary Hagel Enroute to Singapore’, United States
Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) (30 May 2013).103See: {https://www.iiss.org/events/shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2019} accessed 27 April 2021.104Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’.
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high-ranking and influential policymakers attending in their formal capacities.105 In fact, the SLDuses this autonomy as a draw for high-ranking officials (ID7).
Like the MSC, its format and participants are fungible and it does not seek to produce anagreed upon communiqué.106 This flexibility, previously considered evidence of weakness inother dialogues, is now seen as an indication of diplomatic and institutional maturity.107
Regardless of this gradual change in perception, the SLD remains unique. Security expertDesmond Ball noted that ‘it will be a while before the ADMM-Plus will be prepared to tacklethe inter-state issues that form the main themes of the SLD. The ADMM-Plus does not providean opportunity for publicly airing, let alone debating, policy positions.’108
Due to its diverse levels of formality, the SLD fosters communicative discourse as it ‘providesan important platform from which the national stakeholders in Asia-Pacific security mayrehearse and clarify their defence politics’. It also creates space for coordinative discourse as itoffers ‘significant opportunities for more detailed, off-the-record discussions of key securityconcerns’.109 This unique combination of discursive spaces bridges the gap between formalpolicy and the processes of politics and policymaking in a region where such forums are inshort supply.
The levels of formality vary across and within the three-day Dialogue. The most formal aspectis the plenary sessions. These sessions are largely composed of communicative discourse, similarto other regional dialogues, except they differ in that ‘any participant in the dialogue (includingjournalists and academics) is able to stand up and ask a question without giving prior notice’.110
These sessions are considered ‘on the record’ and many important policy announcements,as well as praises and criticisms of other attending countries, have been made at the SLD.Less formal, and private in nature, are special sessions. These are issue specific gatheringshosted by the IISS. While they are open to all attendees, they are considered off-the-record,and speaking slots are largely assigned to governmental representatives. These sessions providethe opportunity for state representatives to both clarify their nation’s stance on policy issues(communicative discourse) as well as discuss these issues with those in attendance (coordinativediscourse).
The most informal, and the main draw of the SLD, are the opportunities for defence ministersto meet bi- or trilaterally (ID7).111 Facilitated by the IISS, these are organised by the respectivestates and can either be conducted privately or publicly. Within these meetings, defence officialsare at liberty to be frank should they choose to be. It is common for defence officials to scheduleanywhere from 15–20 such meetings throughout the Dialogue and as David Capie and BrendanTaylor noted, ‘interviews suggest that officials undoubtedly put the greatest value on the shortbilateral interactions which occur on the sidelines of the conference’.112 By far, these meetingshave the most coordinative potential and are one of the few opportunities per year that defenceofficials get to meet privately with their counterparts from other countries.
105As Dr John Chipman stated at the last SLD: ‘We have this year over 60 full delegates from some 40 countries, with awider array of full government ministers than ever before.’ See John Chipman, ‘Keynote Address Speech at the 18th AsiaSecurity Summit’, The IISS Shangri-La Dialogue (31 May 2019).
106Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 364.107For instance, when the third ADMM-Plus failed to issue a Joint Declaration due to a lack of consensus in 2015,
Singapore’s defence minister Dr Ng Eng Hen claimed that this was a positive outcome that ‘demonstrates that theADMM-Plus is maturing as a platform and countries are able to discuss and debate issues freely, and even disagree witheach other’. Henrick Z. Tsjeng, ‘The case for making ADMM-Plus and annual meeting’, The Diplomat (2 August 2017).
108Ball, ‘Reflections on defence security in East Asia’, p. 20.109Ibid.110Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 365.111Also see IISS, ‘Shangri-La Dialogue 2017: 16th Asia Security Summit’ (International Institute for Strategic Studies:
Singapore, 2017).112Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 367.
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Types of discourse
There is diversity in both the types and levels of ideas presented at the SLD. A major contributorto this is the fact that the SLD is not organised by a national government and enjoys multiplesources of funding. This includes governmental funding, particularly from the Singaporean,Japanese, and Australian governments; private grants from companies such as BAE Systemsand Boeing, and foundations such as the MacArthur Foundation.113 While this funding maybe in return for access to security policymakers, the SLD has been able to diversify its fundingsources, and the comparative presence and influence of the military-industrial complex hasdiminished. The attempt was to enhance the quality of discourse by facilitating ‘the participationof greater numbers of non-official participants, to maintain the quality of non-official partici-pants, and to encourage the participation of more non-official representatives from smaller statesand younger participants’.114 While the SLD claims to host a diversity of actors, it is not an ‘open’forum. The SLD has striven to keep the dialogue from becoming ‘an old boy’s club’ by encour-aging civil society participation, and the inclusion of young leaders so that speakers get challen-ging and astute questions they would not get in a static meeting (ID7). The Dialogue recentlystarted the South Asian Young Leaders’ Program to incorporate more youth in discussion buthas had less overt success in including NGOs.115 The organisers have also made efforts to ensurethat the content of the ideas (via the agenda and selective inclusion of certain civil society parti-cipants) is kept dynamic and ‘not prone to stagnation, as can sometimes become the case in theregional dialogue business’.116 As Jina Lim recently noted, this is more likely to happen ‘on thesidelines, … involving invited members of the Track 2 community [non-governmental andunofficial, for example, academics, think tanks, media, etc.], a particular niche of the SLD.’Indeed, ‘each part of the Dialogue has its purpose – public sessions enable signalling of commit-ment, announcement of policies, … and questioning – even “interrogation” of officials by non-government participants’.117
Access to governing authority
While other forums have struggled with waning or inconsistent attendance or high-level support,the Shangri-La Dialogue reliably attracts the highest levels of defence officials to its yearly meet-ing. At present, the Dialogue is most regularly attended by senior military officers and defenceofficials, often at the ministerial level. The attendance of such high-level officials is self-reinforcing, as countries that are interested in engaging with regional discourses will send high-level officials if they know that their discourses will be received by other high-level officials.
For instance, the attendance of a ministerial-level attendee, like the then-Chinese defence min-ister in 2011, gave the Dialogue a certain level of legitimacy, in terms of potential access to gov-erning authority. However, after a particularly confrontational exchange China chose to expressits displeasure by then sending a member of the PLA’s Academy of Military Science to theDialogue instead of an official from the Ministry of National Defense from 2016 to 2018. Thedowngrading of its attendees was an attempt to indirectly censure the Dialogue by removing
113The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a US-based foundation that supports creative people, effectiveinstitutions, and influential networks. The IISS-US was awarded $705,000 between 2009 and 2018, including three grants inInternational Peace & Security and Nuclear Challenges; available at: {https://www.macfound.org/grantees/443/}.
114Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 369.115William Choong (eds), IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2018 (The International Institute for Strategic Studies: Hobbs the
Printers Ltd., Hampshire, 2018), available at: {https://issuu.com/iiss-publications/docs/sld2018_proceedings_book} accessed27 April 2021.
116Capie and Taylor, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue’, p. 364.117Jina Lim, ‘The Shangri-La Dialogue: ensuring Singapore’s relevance in defence diplomacy’, Singapore Policy Journal
(8 November 2020), available at: {https://spj.hkspublications.org/2020/11/08/the-shangri-la-dialogue-ensuring-singapores-relevance-in-defence-diplomacy/{.
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high-level participants, but rather proved the point that the quality of dialogue was such that itmade the Chinese government uncomfortable with the type and the quality of the discourse thattakes place at the SLD.118 China had to cope with the fact of having ‘little influence over theagenda’, which means that it is often faced with issues it does not wish to discuss and beingbroached in a manner it is uncomfortable with in an ‘open, multilateral setting’.119
ConclusionsThis article serves as a preliminarily attempt to unravel the complex factors rendering specificTrack 1.5 security dialogues more relevant and enduring than other types of regional security dia-logues. It also offers a concrete clarification about the three multitrack forms of diplomacy that weassociate with different types and functions of discourse.
Drawing upon existing discourse approaches we have clarified and broadened upon the con-cept of the quality of discursive space and identified this as an important feature determining thesuccess of regional security processes. We have argued that for a dialogue to have high qualitydiscursive space it must have a balance of at least three identified important characteristics: thelevel of formality/informality; the types of discourse used, and access to governing authority.In other words, in this article we have found a combination of factors to be a promising explana-tory key to improve our understanding of the role of Track 1.5 diplomacy forums.
The empirical analysis carried out in the time frame of a decade, from 2009 to 2019, hasapplied these factors to the two selected cases studies, the MSC in Europe and the SLD inAsia, after carefully considering the respective emerging competitors and other similar forums.Our findings from the empirical analysis provide an important contribution to the literatureon discourse, by developing the concept of discursive space and highlighting the factors thatare relevant for discursive quality in the context of multitrack diplomacy and security practice.
When viewed through our proposed analytical framework, both the MSC and the SLD appearto have found their own balance among the mentioned factors: they can boast unique ‘hierarchiesof formality’ that allow for a wealth of communicative and coordinative ideational exchanges, andenjoy robust attendance by high-level policymakers, mitigated by representation by other idea-tional and policy stakeholders. This means that new or innovative ideas can potentially beexchanged in the discursive spaces created within these dialogues. Alongside, relationshipsbetween individuals representing state and non-state actors can be further developed and broughthome to each single institution.
Furthermore, the enduring relevance of the MSC and of the SLD has not gone unnoticed andthere are clear indications that other forums, both state and non-state alike, are actively attempt-ing to recreate their special discursive environments by copying their format. For instance, theASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting has adopted many of the characteristics of the SLD (includ-ing bilateral meetings, private sessions, incorporating experts, and holding seminars). TheADMM and ADMM+ processes are not the only competition to the SLD. Indeed, China argu-ably established the Xiangshan Forum as a direct competitor to the SLD, with the aim of empha-sising the communicative discourses of China. Despite having a decade to mature, this forum hasnot achieved traction equal to the SLD because the Chinese-controlled agenda has led
118Members of the Academy of Military Science have no formal government position. When viewed through the lens ofdiscursive institutionalism, the removal of a ministerial-level attendees and a politically powerless replacement altered thevalue of the Dialogue’s discursive space because the to whom aspect of discourse was changed. However, the Minister ofNational Defence Wei Fenghe attended in 2019. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong used the performative aspectof the Dialogue to state his country’s stance in light of the growing Chinese presence, and in front of the Chinese DefenceMinister himself, Lee said: ‘The United States is welcome and has many friends in Asia. It’s not that they (the US) buy them,but that there is a certain breadth of spirit, generosity, [sic] policy.’ Ravi Buddhavarapu, ‘Shangri La Dialogue in Singaporesees US and China on collision course: Battle of values set to play out in Indo-Pacific’, FirstPost (3 June 2019).
119Shannon Tiezzi, ‘Why is China downgrading participation in the Shangri-La Dialogue?’ The Diplomat (2 June 2017).
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participants to question its impartiality and thus its utility. In other words, state control over dia-logues may create a discursive space with some levels of informality and access to governmentalauthority, but that is hostile towards ideational diversity and coordinative discourse.
In Europe, potential competition to the MSC comes from a varied array of conferences anddialogues. As of yet, there is no singular security dialogue that is able to compete with theMSC’s longevity and ability to be more inclusive over time. In effect, the MSC appears enduringand stable in its capacity to remain ‘The Event’ of security practitioners and policymakers inEurope. As a matter of fact, given the difficulty to fund any other similar project in the longterm it is hard to argue that the MSC is at risk of being replaced by other forums. Above all,the MSC has certainly influenced the way in which Track 1.5 security diplomacy is being exerted,and newcomers like the Rome MED Dialogues are adopting formats that are similar to those ofthe MSC. The attempts by other dialogues, while not definitive, are an additional indication thatthe importance of a balance between the three identified components is applicable across differ-ent contexts.
Ultimately, shortcomings in studies like ours are to be found in the ‘persistent inability toadequately explain the sources of profound transformations in powerful narratives and interms of the challenges associated with the study of non-material and more diffuse dimensionsand effects of power that the concept of discourse entails’.120 More contingent limits of thisresearch pertain to the limited access independent researchers external to these security commu-nities may encounter when approaching and attempting to interview participants to these dialo-gues. We are aware that the limits of generalisability of this study due to the fact that the empiricalevidence may be biased because behind-closed-door activities are rarely reported and certainempirical evidence does not appear in interviews.
This article, we hope, lays a solid foundation for additional research in this area. The providedcase studies were intended to serve as exploratory examples and, we believe, are only initial foraysinto the future possible research. Future avenues for research might include applying the devel-oped theoretical framework to other dialogues and contexts, as a way to enhance the understand-ing of the role of non-state agents in regional security governance and of the new forms ofdiplomacy.
Acknowledgements. Our names are listed in alphabetical order. The authors are extremely grateful for the useful com-ments both from the anonymous reviewers and the editors of the journal. We also want to thank all the professionals inter-viewed in Europe and Asia, who we believe are part of an incredible and sometimes invisible community of knowledge.
Anna Longhini is a researcher at Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Florence, where she also earned her PhD in PoliticalScience with research on foreign policy think tanks in Europe. Her previous work was published by the Central EuropeanJournal of Public Policy and the International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis. Author’s email:[email protected]
Erin Zimmerman received her PhD from the University of Adelaide, Australia in 2013. She is an Associate at the GermanInstitute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany. Her current research focuses on non-state actors as governanceentrepreneurs, emerging governance structures, and non-traditional security. Her most recent book, GovernanceEntrepreneurs: Think Tanks and Non-Traditional Security in Southeast Asia, was published by Palgrave MacMillan in2016. Author’s email: [email protected]
120Holzscheiter, ‘Between communicative interaction and structures of signification’, p. 143.
Cite this article: Longhini, A., Zimmerman, E. 2021. Regional security dialogues in Europe and in Asia: The role of Track 1.5forums in the practice of international security. European Journal of International Security 6, 481–502. https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2021.14
502 Anna Longhini and Erin Zimmerman
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